Saturday, May 30, 2015

My hero / Football by David Conn



My hero: 

Football

 by David Conn

The game should be governed in a way that makes all football lovers proud


David Conn
Saturday 30 May 2015

T
he former Argentine footballer Jorge Valdano once wrote that the journey of every adult football lover begins with a child, kicking a ball to the park. For some of those involved at the highest ranks of Fifa, their journey from the park ended this week in dawn arrests or guilty pleas to alleged corruption beyond a child’s imagination. One ineradicable image conjured by the US criminal indictment is the allegation that the Fifa executive committee member Jeffrey Webb had a $3m bribe partly routed to the man who was building him a swimming pool. The 164-page indictment of 14 defendants indeed left one almost drowning in detail, but still the anger and disgust came through. I fell in love with football as a boy in the parks, playgrounds and in the very air of Manchester, and I still believe – more than ever – in its beauty as a sport and the essential effort, spirit and team ethos it requires. Yet the game is subject to relentless exploitation by people entrusted to be its custodians, what the Swiss attorney general, referring to allegations regarding Fifa’s award of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar, described this week as “unjust enrichment”. Yet unjust enrichment is not restricted to the bribes or kickbacks that fall under the strict definition of corruption. Would it have been more admirable had Webb, if this bribe is proven, taken a grossly inflated fee from a TV rights contract by being on the payroll legitimately? Many whose enrichment has outraged football lovers have made millions by selling shares in football companies that supporters still quaintly refer to as clubs. The guiding light for running football should be as simple as the game’s essence. Picture the young boy, running to the park with his ball, and nurture a sport fit for his lifelong loyalty.

• David Conn’s books about football include The Beautiful Game? and Richer than God.




2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler 
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm

2010

017 My hero / Jack Yeats by Colm Tóibín
018 My hero / Francisco Goya by Diana Athill
019 My hero / Max Stafford-Clark by Sebastian Barry
020 My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey

036 My hero / Robert Lowell by Jonathan Raban
037 My hero / Beryl Bainbridge by Michael Holroyd
038 My hero / Charles Schulz by Jenny Colgan
039 My hero / Oliver Knussen by Adam Foulds
040 My hero / Annie Proulx by Alan Warner

041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray
042 My hero / Edwin Morgan by Robert Crawford
043 My hero / Anne Lister by Emma Donoghue
044 My hero / Jane Helen Harrinson by Mary Beard
045 My hero / Edmund Burke by David Marquand
046 My hero / Shelagh Deleaney by Jeanette Winterson
047 My hero / Christopher Marlowe by Val McDermid
048 My hero / Gwen John by Anne Enright
049 My hero / Michael Mayne by Susan Hill
050 My hero / Stanley Spencer by Howard Jacobson

051 My hero / William Beveridge by Will Hutton
052 My hero / Jean McConville by Amanda Foreman
053 My hero / Alexander Pushkin by Elaine Feinstein
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal

2011
079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan
100 Thomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson
102 My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill

2012

190 My hero / Iris Murdoch by Charlotte Mendelson
194 My hero / René Descartes by James Kelman
199 My hero / Albert Camus by Geoff Dyer

2015
2016




Posted by at
Labels: , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)